pain-crea-us titus

So last night kazi started throwing up like crazy and foaming at the mouth, so I took him to the emergency room. They did a bunch of tests and found that he had a mass of gas in his upper intestines that indicated that nothing was moving through his system. This is really life threatening to cats.

The ER doctors thought that he might have swallowed a foreign object and recommended surgery that would have us out the door at over $6,000, without which he would need to be euthanized. We didn't really want to spend that much, since Kazi is a pretty old cat and doesn't have a long time left anyway. So we just took him home.

This morning, I called his regular vet and she said she would do his surgery for a fraction of the amount the ER quoted. So, I took him in. She did some x-rays to try to rule out an obstruction and found that his bowels were not passing anything through, so he went into surgery at 3:00 pm. She cut him open and found that his pancreas was swollen gignormous and was the cause of his intestines being blocked so she just sewed him back up without doing anything else and started a treatment for pancreaitis. He'll be in the hospital for a few days with an IV for fluids and medicine. His prognosis is still hard to guess. He had a pretty advanced and critical case so it may have done some permanent damage to his other organs. Or he could be perfectly fine once things get moving again.

For now, we are just hoping that he gets well. He's been a member of our family for 13 years and has been a force of love and companionship in our lives. I know that he has changed anti-cat people's opinions about cats by being awesome.

I was just saying (a few weeks ago) that we should get him pet health insurance since he is getting older. Well played, life. Well played.